The flattened Carlton Tavern in 2015

CAN it really be a decade since Harrington turned the corner at Carlton Vale to be confronted with a pub in ruins?

I wasn’t the only one stood there staring in disbelief at the crumble of cracked bricks.

Only the word “tavern” was just about surviving on the upstairs sign.

It was April 2015 and this was the Carlton Tavern, wrecked by a developer seemingly prepared to act first and say sorry later.

The right planning permission for the demolition had never been granted before this man-made earthquake.

Often you hear councillors and councils talk tough about their powers and it sounded like a grand threat to make them rebuild it “brick by brick”.

The rebuilt pub in 2021

Who knows?

Maybe the developers were thinking. surely Westminster City Council can’t really actually mean BRICK BY BRICK?

But it did, and what followed was the extraordinary story of a phoenixian rise for the pub that now stands on the site today.

Well done to all those that stood firm.

It’s a story, for once, which shows you don’t need to turn every corner of our city into a block of luxury flats.

Pubs may not be the way to maximise a site’s potential but they remain an important meeting place for neighbours, and that social value is impossible to quantify.

I’ll be popping in this month, with the astonishing scenes of the rubble that lay there 10 years ago in my mind.

A pint will be raised in honour of those that saved the tavern.